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Bitcoin Core maintainers have merged a pull request to remove a long-standing DNS seed operated by developer Luke Dashjr, citing a breach of the project’s neutrality policies.
The removal, executed on December 4, 2025, follows findings that the seed was failing to return a representative sample of the Bitcoin network which is a violation of Expectation #1 of “Expectations for DNS seed operators“, meaning Luke’s DNS seed failed neutrality requirements.
The merged PR additionally “backports” the change to all supported branches of Core (v30.x).
Several developers confirmed that Luke’s DNS seed did not return nodes running versions of Core later than 28.1. Data provided by John Moffett visualizes this below.
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @047b99aa4d 12h
Imagine the coming shitstorm of claims and conspiracies...
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500 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox 3h
We also know that Luke has been in contact with the FBI regarding this hack, and has possibly given them access to machines under his control so that they can perform an investigation. While I expect that they would not still have access to machines currently used in production, it is still uncertain to me as to whether Luke has sole control over the seed, especially with the aforementioned disclaimer.
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